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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Things #Ethiopia Do To Sabotage Freedom of Expression

The
May 2005 election is a turning point for Ethiopian political sphere, so is for
the Freedom of Expression in the country. The election ended with electoral
board’s announcement that the incumbent is a winner of the election which oppositions
called rigged. Major opposition of the time, CUD, supporters went out in the
streets to protest which had ended in death of nearly 200 people when the
government tried to crackdown.

EPRDF,
the ruling coalition, said it took lessons from the election in its news outlet
‘Abiyotawi Democracy’. In the first term of five years since the election, many
changes of control were effected against the people. Apparently, Freedom of
Expression is the first of the most victims. Here are a few of the systematic
approaches the government used to ban the freedom.

Rule
By Law

Controversial
proclamations for violating constitutional rights were passed during the first
term of post 2005 election. Among these are included the amendment of the Press
Proclamation, the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation and the Civil-Societies
Proclamation. The latter one entirely banned the role of civil societies in
‘rights’-related activities where as the former two contained articles that
limited freedom of expression given in article 29 of the Ethiopian
constitution.

Since
these proclamations were passed, at least eight journalists are convicted in
relation to terrorism and if you ask any ordinary citizen whether or not these
journalists are terrorists, the most probable answer is definitely ‘No!’.

The
trend of journalists’ prosecution before the anti-terrorism proclamation was
focused on ‘defamation’; but, immediately after it, almost all journalists who
are taken to court were prosecuted of terrorism. This makes the fact that the
government wants to rule by law instead practicing ‘the rule of law’ on a spot
light. As a result of which, significant number of people undergoes self-censorship
before going to any sort of publicly expression.

Controlling
Every Business Sector

Recent
World Bank report revealed not only that Ethiopia is among the top ten in public
investments but also that it is the worst ten in private investment. Ethiopian
government (the incumbent) runs a policy that discourages private investment
simply because it doesn’t have trust to the sector. This itself has a history
with the 2005 election in which private investors were said donated much amount
of money to strengthen the opposition.

By
controlling public sectors, including telecommunication and major media houses,
Ethiopians have now reached to an era ‘when a government speaks the only thing
they can do is just listen’. In fact, the government uses the former to listen,
though the right term could be to spy, to what the people are saying. We will
come back to see how telecom is exploited by government for multiple purposes
including internet filtration.

The
state also owned the biggest printing house of the country and used it to
sabotage Freedom of Expression. Let’s see how:

The
Printing Houses Drama

The
major publishing houses (‘Berhanena Selam’ and ‘Bole’) in Ethiopia are owned by
the state. Bole printing house currently stopped receiving new customers who
come with requests of political newspapers’ publications. It publishes only a
few weekly sports newspapers. Similarly, Berhanena Selam - the oldest and
biggest printing house of the country – regardless of its capacity, is
publishing only five weekly ‘private’ newspapers and those of daily state owned
publications.

There
are many barely equipped, private printing houses. 99 percent of them do not
have the capacity to publish newspapers. So, now is also the era for Ethiopian
magazines to glamour because there are no as many newspapers as used to be 10
years ago. However, the magazines are in surveillance too.

Many
publishers whose newspaper were banned or permissions denied to publishing it
in state-owned printing houses and others tried to come up with magazines and failed.
Government security officials harass printing houses not to publish the
magazines they don’t want to see in circulation. They even threaten the owners
of the printing houses for high taxes. It is a common experience that private
printing houses refuse to publish magazines especially with political contents.

The
state owned printing houses have a lot to disappoint independent media. They do
anything like censorship (Berhanena Selam has it in its working contract) or limit
number of copies and limit number of pages reasoning out shortage of papers.

Driving
Bankrupt

As
compared to neighboring countries, say Kenya, it is hardly fair to say Ethiopia
runs independent media. Currently, the maximum number of circulation Ethiopian
independent newspapers have is 15,000.The number of weekly political newspapers in circulation is only nine.
All TV stations are owned by the federal and regional governments.

There
are only three ‘private’ FM radio station in the country: Fana is owned by top
officials of the incumbent; Zami has an affiliation with the ruling party; and
Sheger chose to be silent in sensitive political issues.

Even
so, the newspapers under circulation can easily go bankrupted because there is
no strong private sector to support or encourage them and the public ones are
not willing to do so. Fana radio, using its affiliation to top officials can
get every advertisement opportunity from the government offices an opportunity
which is rarely possible for independent media.

In
addition, a recent advertisement proclamation limited the advertisement to
content ratio (60:40) of newspapers and magazines. This weakens the power of
the media houses to work on their qualities and do investigations.

Internet
Filtration

Close
to 200 websites and blogs, including this one, are blocked in Ethiopia. Ethiopia
owns the only telecommunication and reports indicated that the state uses it for
surveillance too.

The
websites that cannot be accessed in Ethiopia include websites of legally
registered and operating opposition parties. UDJ (Unity for Democracy and Justice),
major opposition party, website is one of them.

INSA (Internet and Network Security
Agency) is a responsible governmental body to the internet surveillance. It is
a sect of the National Defense Force but works with ethiotelecom and National
Intelligence Office as well.

The
internet filtration victimized many international news websites too. Aljazeera
is one of them. CNN and VoA websites are among those blocked at times when they
published Ethiopian stories that the government couldn’t enjoy and unblocked
them back when the government thinks that the sensation of the stories is gone.

These
are not the only things the government do to sabotage freedom of expression. It
does everything it takes from bureaucratic denial of permission to publish
newspapers to notorious imprisonment of journalists and banning of news outlets
already in circulation. These measures, in turn, paid the ruling party in due
course. The incumbent won the 2010 election taking 99.6% of the seats and is
looking for an equivalent in the coming 2015 election.

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About Me

This blog is run by a writer and democracy activist BefeQadu Z Hailu - an MIS expert by profession and a writer by inclination. BefeQadu worked as Knowledge Management Expert in St. Mary's University; Production Manager for an outsourced program in FM 96.3; Managing Editor of Enqu Magazine; Editor in Chief of Weyeyet Magazine; Volunteering Editor of Global Voices [in AM]; co-founder and blogger at @Zone9ners. BefeQadu has published an award winning novella, ‘Children of Their Parents’, in 2012. Also, he won multiple awards, along with his Zone 9 Blogging Collective colleagues, including CPJ's Press Freedom Award in 2015. BefeQadu has been jailed triple times for blogging and activism practices and he is still following pending cases in court. Follow me on Twitter @befeqe
Website: befeqe.blogspot.com